Subsistence, Economy and Society in the Greek World
Improving the integration of archaeology and science

International Conference, Athens, 22-23 March 2010

Organized by
The Netherlands Institute at Athens (NIA)
and the Hellenic Society of Archaeometry (EAE)

First Circular

Diet and subsistence occupy a central position in archaeologists’ attempts to reconstruct the economic and social organization, as well as the cultural orientation of past societies. The last decades have witnessed the adoption and refinement of various scientific approaches which allow us to reconstruct variation in past diet as well as the role of food in social interaction. These are exciting developments, but the proliferation of analytical techniques also brings in a certain danger, namely over-specialization and a fragmentation of the field. It is therefore becoming imperative to reflect on the integration of scientific and archaeological data, and to compare different methods of analysis more explicitly.

For this reason, we decided to organize a conference which will focus precisely on this topic.  The main aims of the Conference are:

• To explore the relation between subsistence, economy and society in the prehistoric Aegean and the ancient world
• To examine diet, subsistence and economy by integrating and comparing results of different analytical methods such as
• the analysis of animal remains
• the analysis of plant remains
• the analysis of human remains, and more specifically

• stable isotope analysis 
• dental analysis
• dental microwear analysis

• organic residue analysis
• To place the data in their economic, social and cultural context
• To formulate new research questions and select appropriate sampling procedures
• To explore the legal framework and the regulations about sampling procedures, especially in cases of destructive sampling.

We would like to stress that only papers with an explicitly comparative content will be accepted. Papers will therefore have to compare different methods and to integrate scientific results with archaeological data. Papers presenting results obtained by means of one method of analysis (even if they cover different periods or regions) will not be accepted.

Shorter contributions can be presented in the form of posters. We would like to emphasize, however, that posters also need to have a comparative content.

Please note:

• The official languages of the Conference are English and Greek.
• The Conference covers the prehistoric and historical periods to the end of the Roman era.
• As the demarcation of ‘the Greek world’ changes through time, we would like to specify that the Conference covers the northern and southern Greek mainland and the Aegean islands during the prehistoric period. In the historical periods we focus on the same area, although we may include a few papers on the eastern Mediterranean to the margins of the Hellenistic world and the Roman empire.
• Participants will be allotted 15-20 minutes to allow time for discussion (10 minutes per contribution).
• Technical specifications about the posters will be sent in the 2nd Circular.
• The Proceedings of the Conference will be published.

For more information on the conference please check the website of the Netherlands Institute at Athens (http://www.nia.gr), or write to Sofia Voutsaki (s.voutsaki@rug.nl).

The conference will cover accommodation for the speakers. We hope we will be in the position to cover the speakers’ travel costs as well (at least partly). However, as our funds are limited, we would like to ask you to apply for financial support in the first instance to your own institution.

Please fill in the Registration Form (.doc) and return it by 30 August 2009 to the Conference Secretariat:
Mrs Emmy Makri
Netherlands Institute at Athens
Makri 11, 117 42 Athens
Tel (00 30) 210 9210760
FAX  (00 30) 210 9210770
E-mail  nia@nia.gr

You will be notified whether your paper / poster proposal has been accepted by 30 September  2009.

Looking forward to hearing from you,

With best wishes

Sofia Voutsaki
(on behalf of the Organizing Committee)

The Organizing Committee

Association of Environmental Archaeology Spring Conference,
Theme: The Environmental Archaeology of the North
Departments of Archaeology and Geography & Environment
University of Aberdeen
30th March-1st April 2010

The theme of this conference reflects the interests of the Departments of Archaeology and Geography & Environment at the University of Aberdeen, in that it focuses explicitly on the lifeways, worldviews and environments of northern cultures, encompassing a region that takes in the northern Britain, North Atlantic, Northern Eurasia, high latitude North America and the North Pacific.

Popular perception holds that if the 'cradle of civilization' was in warm southern climes, the north was little more than a frozen, peripheral wasteland. Such a caricature is hard to support when we consider the diverse and rich evidence of human cultures in the northern world. While often living in environments which could be less than favourable and even hostile, northern peoples were anything but more primitive versions of those further south. Through complex histories of colonization, local innovation and cultural contact, the northern world developed an astonishing range of prehistoric and historic societies and cultures; from ancient Siberian populations to the Picts of Scotland and from the hunter-fisher-gatherers of the North Pacific to the Vikings of Scandinavia.

This conference will explore human interactions with northern environments and will foster discussion about how individuals and communities understood, adapted to, and transformed the landscapes in which they moved and acted. What the impacts did these communities have on their environments? How does environmental archaeology inform our understanding of northern societies? How do social and cultural constructs shape our understanding of these environments? The programme will devote two days to presentations and will offer an optional field excursion to visit some of the impressive archaeological sites of Aberdeenshire on the third day.

First call for papers: The organising committee would like to invite oral and poster presentations based on these broad themes, involving any aspect of environmental archaeology.

Oral presentations will have a maximum length of 20 minutes. The conference organisers will select from among the submitted proposals and will schedule the presentations in thematic groups. In addition poster presentations are also welcome; the poster format will be notified at the time of the acceptance of proposals. Abstracts should be sent as text documents (preferably in Word format) by November 1 st , 2009 to: t.mighall@abdn.ac.uk. Please include a title, author or authors' complete name(s) and affiliations, a full postal and email addresses. Abstracts should be maximum 200 words and contain a clear description of the topic of the presentation. The language of the conference will be English. Further details will be posted on the websites of the AEA and the Departments of Archaeology and Geography & Environment:

www.abdn.ac.uk/geography/Env_Arch_Conf.php

Conference organisers: Tim Mighall (Geography & Environment), Kevin Edwards (Archaeology & Geography & Environment), Karen Milek (Archaeology) and Keith Dobney (Archaeology).

Informal enquiries to Tim Mighall (t.mighall@abdn.ac.uk)

For over a century, the archaeological potential of drowned intertidal and marine landscapes surrounding the British Isles have been tantalizing alluded to by occasional finds of artefacts and ecofacts recovered by trawlers and dredgers, as well as nearshore features such as submerged forests. However, only within the last decade has it been possible to explore the archaeological landscapes of the deeper sea floors through the interpretation of bathymetric and seismic profiling data. Large scale spatial mapping of this information has allowed the identification of a range of landscapes and discreet geomorphological landforms, from major and minor river systems, through to lakes, wetlands and areas of upland; for the first time, this has allowed archaeologists to assess how early hunter gatherers would have utilised and moved through these landscapes. These studies are not now restricted solely to the waters surrounding the British Isles , but are being undertaken in other regions of the World where appropriate bathymetric and seismic data are available.

From an environmental perspective, the potential of this new approach to identify and accurately map the location of sedimentary traps, such as palaeochannels, offers the possibility to undertake high-resolution sampling and analysis of palaeobiological archives. Such studies will help to achieve a step change in our understanding of human impact, as well as the character of vegetation, palaeoclimate and final marine transgression and inundation of these landscapes.

However, with an increasing appreciation of the potential of these submerged landscapes and their associated environmental archives, comes a realization of the possible threats to the long-term preservation of this resource. This one day meeting aims to take a holistic approach to assessing the potential of the environmental archive in the offshore and intertidal zone and consider themes of sampling, analysis and long-term management.

The organizing committee would like to invite oral presentations and poster papers

around the following four broad themes relating to the nearshore and offshore zone:

• Characterisation of the resource and the chronology of environmental archives
• Dovetailing nearshore and offshore environmental records within a cultural framework
• Modelling and visualisation of submerged landscapes
• Developing research agendas for the long-term management of environmental records

Oral presentations will have a maximum time limit of 20 minutes. Poster papers can be up to AO in size. Abstracts , no more than 250 words in length, should be sent in textformat (preferably Word format) by 15 th July 2010 to: A.J.Howard@bham.ac.uk . Please include a title, author or author's complete name(s) and affiliations, full postal and email addresses. The language of the meeting will be English. In the first instance, informal enquiries should be addressed to Dr Andy Howard ( A.J.Howard@bham.ac.uk ).

Location

The conference will take place in the European Research Institute Building (Building G3 in the Green Zone) on the University Main Campus at Edgbaston. Directions to the ERI Building and the University can be found at http://www.bham.ac.uk/about/maps/ . There is plenty of parking available at weekends and the University also has its own railway station (10 minutes and 2 stops from Birmingham New Street ).

Conference fee

The conference fee will be £33.00 and includes coffee / tea on arrival, mid-morning and afternoon. A ‘finger buffet' lunch is also included in the price.

Booking

An on-line registration form for this conference can be downloaded at http://www.iaa.bham.ac.uk/aea2010/
or download in PDF format or MS Word format

Registration for this meeting should be made by Wednesday, 18 th August 2010, and forms should be returned by email to A.J.Howard@bham.ac.uk (IAA, University of Birmingham , Edgbaston, Birmingham , B15 2TT ).

The Association for Environmental Archaeology (AEA) Annual Conference will be held at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies in Kyoto, Japan,

1st-3rd December, 2010

Theme: The Environment and Civilization: Past, Present and Future

*** Fees for the conference in Kyoto are reduced***

International Research Center for Japanese Studies (IRCJS) in Kyoto has agreed to co-host the AEA conference. Consequently, the charge for using conference rooms becomes free. Therefore, we decided to reduce the registration fee.

The annual conference of the AEA in 2010 is held in Kyoto, Japan. It is the first place to have the AEA conference in Aisa. 2010 is the 30th anniversary from the first introduction of environmental archaeology to Japan in the book “Introduction to the Environmental Archaeology” by Y. Yasuda (1980). Now, this field became more and more important for the evaluation of the past and prediction and planning of the future. It is honorable to have the AEA conference in Kyoto in this memorial year. The 2010 AEA Annual Conference is organized and hosted by the International Research Center for Japanese Studies.

Kyoto is located about 50km from the center of Osaka and easy to access from Kansai International Airport (Osaka) by JR or limousines and from Tokyo by Shinkansen bullet train. The city used to be a capital city of Japan and there are many temples and shrines always attracting many tourists. The city is surrounded by mountains. International Research Center for Japanese Studies is located on the foot of mountains in the west and about 40 minutes away from the center of Kyoto city by car. The mountains in the west called Nishiyama also hold some tourist spots, but unlike the centre of the city, it is a quiet place. You will see a beautiful late autumn view of the mountains.

The main theme of the conference will be “the Environment and Civilization: Past, Present and Future”. Environmental archaeology, which evaluates the present and predicts the future based on the past, plays an important role in dealing with various environmental problems. In what kind of environment, did agriculture develop? How did human activities alter the environment? What kind of environment changes were related to the collapse of the old civilization? How did the past empires alter the environment and why did they collapse? To what extent were historical events related to environmental change? It is time for us to answer these questions evaluating the present in both environmental and civilization histories and predicting the future path of mankind.

This AEA conference aims at extending our insight into the role of environmental and civilization histories of Asia both in the past and the future of mankind and provides an ideal opportunity for researches to meet up and report on environmental archaeology to the world.

The conference venue will be the International Research Center for Japanese Studies in Kyoto with conference papers from 1 st to 2 nd December. The conference will be followed by one day excursion (3 rd December) visiting tourist attracting places in Kyoto. Kyoto is an old Japanese town with 1200 years of history and late autumn in Kyoto is known to be the most beautiful season. We therefore invite you to enjoy the traditions of Japanese culture and its beautiful scenery. We are planning to visit Nijojo castle, Kinkakuji temple and Arashiyama. At lunch time, we will visit Tenryuji temple to have “Shojinryori” which is a traditional Japanese vegetarian food.

First call for papers : The organising committee would like to invite oral and poster presentations based on these broad themes, involving any aspect of environmental archaeology.

Oral presentations will have a maximum length of 25 minutes. The conference organisers will select from among the submitted proposals and will schedule the presentations. Poster presentations are also welcome. The poster format will be notified at the time of the acceptance of proposals. The official language of the conference will be English.

The provisional session titles:

Deadline for Titles: 28th February 2010

Deadline for Abstract (papers and posters) : 31 st August, 2010

Abstracts should be sent as text documents (preferably in Word format) to: junkokit@nichibun.ac.jp. Please include a title, author or authors' complete name(s) and affiliations, a full postal and email addresses. Abstracts should be in English and 1-2 pages in length (NOT exceeding 2 pages) and contain a clear description of the topic of the presentation.

Download Call for papers (.doc) Registration form (.pdf) Registration fee and financial support (.doc) Financial Support Opportunities (.doc)

Organising committee

Contact address

Junko Kitagawa

E-mail: junkokit@nichibun.ac.jp